Palaeo Period

10,000 to 6,000 BC

The Arrival of the Big Game Hunters

Clovis Point

The Palaeo, or Palaeoindian,
Period, is the earliest firmly established
era of human activity in Manitoba. It began approximately 12,000 years
ago, and some archaeologists attribute its development to the Aboriginal
discoverers of North America,
who migrated over the Bering land bridge that once connected Alaska
and Siberia. These early inhabitants are widely identified by the appearance
of similar technologies and subsistence patterns throughout the continent.
As elsewhere, Palaeo cultures are represented in Manitoba by the predominance
of skillfully crafted stone spearheads, such as the Clovis point in the
picture to the left.

Ways of life depended upon the hunting of now
extinct giant mammals,
such as the mammoth, that thrived in the Ice Age environments typical of
the time. This emphasis earned Manitoba's First Peoples the title of
"big game hunters".

The Palaeo period in Manitoba can be subdivided into three successive
traditions known as,
Clovis,
Folsom, and
Plano,
each of which is marked by new tool kits that were developed in response to
changing environmental conditions. The Clovis and Folsom artifacts are
sparsely distributed and confined to the southwestern part of the province.
Evidence of Plano cultures is much more widespread and assumed the form of
three regional
variants, each of which was especially suited to exploit the particular
food resources within the local environment.